Bipartisan deficit commission unlikely to make big Medicare changes

National Journal: "For all of the attention surrounding President Obama's bipartisan commission on deficit reduction, the country's biggest cost centers — health care in general and Medicare specifically — will likely remain unscathed when the panel offers its recommendations in December. The reason is simple: When congressional Democrats crafted the health care reform package, which became law a little more than six months ago, they did so by squeezing Medicare as much as they could politically … The Democrats' nifty feat of taking out more than $500 billion from Medicare, mostly by reducing provider payments and changing how the system pays private health insurance companies, has handcuffed the Republican budget hawks who serve on the panel. The cuts have left them nibbling around the edges in an attempt to reduce the nation's $2.5 trillion health care tab" (DoBias, 10/2).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.